FATTBNIITG. 101 



tokens Of the same brood to fat together. Four are e&ongh 

 to fat at a time; but never allow your coop, if you have only 

 one, to remain empty; as you kill off one lot of chickens you 

 should have another batch ready to put in. Cramming I am 

 entirely averse to. It Is a needlessly cruel and disgusting 

 custom, though very frequently practiced, especially in 

 Prance. 



Koyr comes the grand question of food. It should always be 

 pultaceous; the birds cannot pick up pebbles and little stones 

 when shut up, so cannot, digest grain of any sort. Feed them 

 on bread and milk, oatmeal and milk, rice well boiled with a 

 little pepper mixed with it, barley-meal, Indian com meal, pota- 

 toes steamed and mi£ed with barley-meal, chopped green food, 

 &c Very many breeders give a large amount of suet mixed 

 with the food, but unless people are fond of greasy fat on their 

 poultry, which to me is an abomination, I should not advise it, 

 as it makes the flesh so gross. .Tivrj/ the diet as much as possible, 

 fid never give it in a sloppy state, but crumbly. Three weeks 

 H a month at the outside is enough to keep fowls up for fatting : if 

 kept longer the confinement begins to tell on them. Some peo- 

 ple mix treacle or sugar with their food. Saccharine matter is 

 no doubt conducive to fat, and oatmeal, or Indian com grotind 

 into meal and mixed with treacle until it is in a crumbling state, 

 is a food all chickens are fond o^ but should only be given 'to ' 

 those you wish to feed; it would not do for those puUet? you 

 wish to bring on to lay quickly, as it would develop interior fat, 

 which is always fatal to constant laying. 



Guard against waste of food. Only experience will cause you 

 to know how iniich to supply at once; and until you learn this, 

 directly you see the chickens begin to pick daintily at their food 

 remove it, give to the other fowls then vrhat i& left, but on no 

 account alloVF it to stay in the trough for the fattiilg chickens to. 

 eati when, as the ol^ women say, "they've a mind to." If they 



